BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - China has sent a woman space engineer to the space for the first time.
Nuclear rocket scientist Wang Haoze was part of a three-member crew aboard Shenzhou-19 spaceship that was launched Wednesday morning on a mission to China's Tiangong space station.
The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, docked to the orbiting space station more than six hours after it blasted off the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
The launch is a complete success, Chinese media quoted China Manned Space Agency, or CMSA, as saying.
lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northeastern China's Gobi Desert early Wednesday morning. They are expected to stay aboard the space station for six months.
The third Chinese female astronaut to travel to space, Wang is an aerospace flight engineer in the People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps, with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Wang, 34, along with Shenzhou-19 Commander Cai Xuzhe, and Song Lingdong, will carry out scientific research and spacewalks during a six-month mission.
They will replace three-member Shenzhou 18 crew, who are scheduled to return to Earth on 4 November.
China, a potential rival of the United States in the ambitious race for dominance in the outerspace, has set a target of sending humans to the Moon by 2030.
Under its advanced space program, China plans to set up a constellation of 14,000 satellites to transmit broadband internet connectivity from space.
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